Some advice on VR

[GCBraun 2,390]

4 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

I'm reading about people maxing their video ram with GTX 1080 ti's - I just don't see VR being mainstream for some time.  Maybe for fun little "arcade" style games...but serious simming?  Eeek!

What is "serious simming" for you? Could you please clarify why someone using VR cannot sim "seriously"?

Just to give you a picture, my Sunday night flying session:

• P3D v4.1
• FSLabs A320
• FlyTampa EKCH to LOWW
• Orbx OpenLC Europe, Vector, Germany North/South
• Chaseplane
• ActiveSky + REX
• PTA + ENVTEX
• VATSIM with full voice control
• vPilot pinned into the cockpit with Oculus Dash 2.0
• Navigraph charts pinned into the cockpit with Oculus Dash 2.0
• PFPX flightplan pinned into the cockpit with Oculus Dash 2.0
• Conclusion: A remarkable experience, without ever leaving the VR environment. 

Is this "serious" enough for you?

 

[soaring_penguin 428]

knowing Ryan from this forum, he probably means : "simming for a longer amount of time". The "My simming is better then yours"  mantra does not apply to him.

 

Why there is apparently not much interest in VR ? I think the opposite, that there is a lot of interest, but:

- the number of headsets out there is small, it is an emerging technology

-HMD are still in their infancy

-HMD are very expensive

-XP11 VR is currently only in its design stage, even Laminar does not call it beta yet.

-mainstream support for VR is still lacking. For example SteamVR linux is still in beta, but I expect it to become full fledged to support their Steam boxes, it would be a nice technology showcase. And for now, Mac VR is not even on Laminars' roadmap.

 

For me, I am eagerly waiting for VR, I would even consider moving back to Windows if that is what it takes, but for now it is too expensive for what I get back, I don't want to (and I can not) invest every year 300 to 600$ in the HMD alone, then as others stated, the rest of my system needs to be up to date also to maintain an acceptable framerate.

So for now, I am sitting on the bench, letting others with a bigger wallet then me do the testing  (I used to be on the edge of technology, but a changed family situation does not allow this anymore).

 

Just my 2 cents, as usual :-)

[tonywob 4,768]

I don't think I could personally stomach more than 30 minutes using VR. I tried a flight from KSAN to KLAX in Aerofly and after about 30 minutes or so I had to turn off because I started getting a headache. There is no denying it looked absolutely incredible and ORBX's LOWI in AFS is incredible and has to be experienced to appreciate it.

X-Plane though, I'm hoping Vulcan can win back performance. The only way I could get rid of the crazy vomit-inducing stuttering was to drop everything to medium/low, and remove any complicated scenery. However, the effect of sitting in the 737 at full-size almost feeling like you could reach out and touch the controls is something 2D simming fails to give (even with TrackIR), but the tech needs to mature, hardware needs to catch up and the HMDs need to be better thought out.

For other games though it's very much worth the effort. I tried the Apollo 11 experience which was incredible, the Air Car demo has to be experienced and Dirt Rally in VR was what racing sims always wanted to be.

 

 

 

 

[ryanbatc 12,774]

This is an XP thread - maybe VR works better in P3D @GCBraun

[GCBraun 2,390]

2 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

This is an XP thread - maybe VR works better in P3D @GCBraun

We are still on "VR preview" in XP11, meaning things will surely evolve. I have indeed to lower my settings considerably to get good performance, but I have done pretty long cross-country flights on the C172 without an issue. Don't forget that VR is not only about hardware. The software evolution of the Oculus Rift has been remarkable in the last weeks/months.

[scotchegg 4,159]

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

I don't think I could personally stomach more than 30 minutes using VR. I tried a flight from KSAN to KLAX in Aerofly and after about 30 minutes or so I had to turn off because I started getting a headache. There is no denying it looked absolutely incredible and ORBX's LOWI in AFS is incredible and has to be experienced to appreciate it.

X-Plane though, I'm hoping Vulcan can win back performance.

I'm one of those annoying gits who doesn't seem to be affected by nausea / headaches with VR but I've read plenty around to suggest that it's often a question of exposure and developing 'sea-legs' so what you're describing should have an end.

I'm also pinning a lot of hope on Vulcan, especially having seen the amazing difference it makes to performance in Doom 2016. Until then I'm not even going to bother with XP in VR. Elite Dangerous is fairly VR friendly graphically but the flightsims, even IL2, just don't translate well for me so far using the Rift so I'm sticking with the widescreen monitor and TrackIR.

Having said that I laud the exciting virtual world whose birth we're privileged enough to witness!

[tonywob 4,768]

8 hours ago, GCBraun said:

Just to give you a picture, my Sunday night flying session:

• P3D v4.1

I've not yet tried P3D with VR, but very tempted to give it a go to see how it looks and performs. I presume you're using Flyinside?

[Humpty 751]

VR wants to be mainstream but most of our pockets don't allow that.  I want VR can't afford it because i will need to upgrade to a very high end system. 

As to the question of serious simming it depends on the simmer. What kinda flight one considers as serious is all personal

[GCBraun 2,390]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

I've not yet tried P3D with VR, but very tempted to give it a go to see how it looks and performs. I presume you're using Flyinside?

Native VR. Works really well for me. No need for FI anymore. 

[N1125Y 22]

..lot of challenges in the VR arena, things are moving fast, so I'm very optimistic, & do not think real VR "Quality" is 5-10 years away, we all need to remember the VR is driving lot of manufacturers and Developers attention, and we will see constant improvements in accelerated pace. 

Cheers 

[Spam3d 54]

I run 1.5 supersample but run it through the occulus tray tool instead of steam. I also regularly fly zibo's 737 all around the place, i know its not the sharpest of images for the displays but ive never really had that much trouble with them, and m eager to see the improved 2nd gen! Ive fallen in love with the whole VR experience and cant wait until the hardware enables us to push clouds and traffic!

[N1125Y 22]

On 1/21/2018 at 4:33 AM, Colonel X said:

Hi Tony,

I wear glasses, too, I think your problem may be that the lenses are made of actual glass? I have plastic lenses and they never fog up. Seems like you may need to get a cheap pair just for VR.

As for blurriness, I really can't understand how it's so bad for you. In the Steam settings, when I raise it from 1.0 to 1.5, I see a big improvement in sharpness, and gauges are readable very well. You may run out of GPU time at some point, first thing you may do to counter this is get rid of clouds (unfortunately, they are heavy hitters in VR). I run at 1.3 with 2xMSAA+FXAA and the image is decent.

However, there are many more tweaks to improve the VR experience, especially lowering the visibility to get the load off the CPU (and make scenery appear smoother), but then you need to touch the skycolors so you don't get foggy colors all the time. I have a LUA script with all my tweaks for VR, let me know if you're interested. Overall I sense the interest in VR is very low, that's why I haven't bothered to share all my findings.

...would it be ok to ask you to forward the Lua scrip to me too ?

I'm running VR using HP VR1000-100 Headset, on a ,respectively, high end Rig, Stock C172 guadges are clear, the only thing in the cockpit is the GPS, a bit blurry, & some of the buttons flouting, my big issue is Scenery outside, which is blurry, hazy most of the time and stuttering, not fun & can get you real head eaches ..... however, once experiencing VR it is very hard to look back to 2D (& MY 2D runs amazingly well) 

 

Cheers

[nikit 20]

I would also be interested and I would appreciate being able to taste that Lua.

Thanks in advance.

[Jimmy RFR 406]

22 hours ago, tonywob said:

For other games though it's very much worth the effort. I tried the Apollo 11 experience which was incredible, the Air Car demo has to be experienced and Dirt Rally in VR was what racing sims always wanted to be.

I can't say I've used my Rift a lot for flight simming so far - perhaps a few hours worth here and there. However... you mention Dirt Rally... now THAT's the game that really blew me away! Assetto Corsa was a pretty good experience too, but the lack of resolution compared to a monitor is a little more noticeable, whereas DR has you spinning the wheel and looking through turns so rapidly that you don't really 'see' anything else.

Some of the dedicated VR games are a load of fun too - lightweight for the most part, but still a good time.

[tonywob 4,768]

I've spent a bit more time trying to get my sims to work in VR. I tried ColonelX's advice regarding increasing to 1.5 and that helped a little bit, but I still have to lean forward like I'm blind to read the G1000. I turned down textures to medium, and have objects on medium and added visibility of 20NM. The sim was mostly smooth then, and I guess it's just a compromise I have to accept for now. I flew around California with just orthos and medium trees, and it was a great experience.

AeroflyFS is really good here. Taxiing around LOWI or KMRY is really incredible and quite life-like, but upon take off the terrain becomes blurry and it's quite hard to make out details just like in X-Plane. I'd find it very hard to use a VFR chart and fly using this, as it feels like I badly need a very strong pair of glasses. But it's really second-to-none when doing circuits and is about as close to the real thing as one can get. Being able to judge the distance from the runway easily and just looking around makes the 2D experience pale in comparison.

I also tried P3D. I stupidly bought Flyinside, but it turned out native support was actually a little better. As mostly an X-Planer, P3D 4.1 surprised me, it performed well and looked nice. I flew around the PNW and ORBX NCA in the A2A C172 and the view was quite clear and relatively smooth (after dropping some settings down). P3D had some lag when turning my head that can be quite disorientating when the scenery is heavier, but P3D actually allowed me to have quite dense autogen and the terrain seemed a little sharper. It was great taxiing around some of my ORBX GA airports in the region as if I was there.

The experience in X-Plane disappointed me the most, but I understand it's an early tech preview and should improve over time as they optimize things. Overall, it's great fun to use, but it's quite hard work for me to use it for flight simming for longer periods as I really do feel like I have really bad vision and wouldn't legally be able to fly if I was that blind .